An internal police survey has revealed significant concerns among the Central District's female police staff around the reporting of workplace bullying and harassment.
The findings also suggest many local female police fear reprisals from colleagues if they report inappropriate behaviour.
The national survey asked 8863 police employees to rate their satisfaction with the organisation's vision and purpose, their engagement with the job, communication, their colleagues, and workplace respect and integrity.
A report on the findings highlights a widening gender gap and warns that bullying, harassment or discrimination could go unreported by female police.
The Central District, which includes Wanganui, scored close to 68 per cent "agreement" across all of the survey questions - a six-point drop from the previous year, and seven points lower than the national average. There were 540 respondents in Central District - a 67.6 per cent response rate.
Less than 58 per cent of the Central District's female police staff said workplace harassment and bullying would be dealt with effectively and 27 per cent felt they couldn't raise these issues without fear of reprisal.
Overall, Wanganui's agreement results tended to be lower than the rest of the district.
Central District commander Superintendent Russell Gibson said the confidentiality of the survey limited its ability to illustrate whether complaints had been dealt with appropriately.
"While we are confident that we have thorough processes in place to deal with inappropriate behaviour, we want our staff, regardless of gender, to have an increased belief in workplace processes and we will continue to champion this."
The drop in results across the Central district reflected a national trend, Mr Gibson said.
Nationally, the survey showed overall results had slipped compared to 2012.
It also revealed a widening gap between men and women in relation to the safe reporting and effective handling of inappropriate workplace conduct.
"Not only have females held a less favourable opinion on these questions year on year, the gender gaps widened in 2012 and the size of these gaps remained virtually unchanged in 2013," the survey analysts wrote.
"This is an area of concern given that females are more likely to be a victim/witness of bullying, harassment and discrimination."
This year, 19 per cent of female police had experienced or witnessed inappropriate workplace conduct, compared to 14.7 per cent of males.
Police Association president Greg O'Connor said the results "weren't good enough".
"I'd be interested to see what those same stats look like in other organisations. I suspect they probably would be similar, but that's not an excuse."
Police were under considerable government pressure to reduce crime, and this focus sometimes "reduced the emphasis" on other strategies - particularly those imposed by Dame Margaret Bazley's Commission of Inquiry, Mr O'Connor said.
The Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct was released in 2007 following Louise Nicholas' allegations that she was raped by police in the 1980s.
The Office of the Auditor-General last year found a "lack of progress" in implementing the report's recommendations.